Cut and Run 7 - Touch and Geaux

take watch upstairs,” he said, voice hoarse. His boots crunched on the broken glass at the base of the staircase as he walked away.
    “Ty,” Zane called after him. Ty paused on the bottom step. Zane hesitated long enough that Ty took another step before he spoke. “Do I really know you? Do I know Ty Grady at all?”
    Ty studied him, trying to parse the anger and pain into something that didn’t feel like he was dying. Zane was still sitting at the bar, his eyes dark and wounded, his shoulders slumped. One chance. That was all Zane was willing to give, even if it broke them both. Ty shook his head and started back up the steps, speaking in a low voice as he went. “If you have to ask that, I guess not.”

Two hours after Ty left him, Kelly joined Zane downstairs for the changing of the guard.
    “Nick’s got upstairs,” Kelly told him.
    “Great,” Zane grunted. He started up the steps, each crunch of the glass bringing him closer to another confrontation with Ty, to a night of sleeping with his lover right next to him and feeling like there was a stranger in his bed.
    When he reached the top of the steps, he took a deep breath to steady himself. It was harder and harder to curb the anger growing. He’d had two hours to think of nothing but all the times Ty must have lied to him to keep from being caught, all the times they’d talked about Zane’s time in Miami that Ty must have been digging for information.
    All the times Ty had simply looked him in the eye and lied.
    His twenty-year party. He had seen Richard Burns there, and now he knew exactly where Ty had disappeared to. He hadn’t been retrieving that damn orchid from his car. God knew what they had been discussing. Zane’s hands balled into fists and he stopped on the steps. He wanted to stomp up there and clock Ty just to get the anger out, just to do something . And his entire body screamed for a drink. He wavered, fighting the urge to go back and pour himself a whiskey.
    The familiar rumbling undertone of Ty’s voice stopped him.
    Ty and Nick were at the far end of the hall, standing outside the room Liam must have taken. Zane studied Ty’s silhouette in the dim hallway. He seemed rigid and tense. He spoke with extensive use of his hands, but nothing of the low murmur reached Zane’s ears.
    Goddamn, Ty. Why couldn’t he have made this easy? Why did he have to tell Zane the truth about his assignment? Why now? Why not hold onto it like he said he’d wanted to instead of breaking Zane’s heart with it? Why did he have to accept the assignment at all? He should have just used some backbone and said no!
    Zane would have said no, had their position been reversed. That much he knew. He would never have kept a secret that big from Ty, not after that first week in New York. Trust was all they’d had, and Ty had used it, abused it. The only thing Ty was afraid of was saying no to a set of orders.
    Ty headed down the hall. Behind him, Nick rested his back against the wall and slid down to sit. Zane supposed that was where Ty had set up camp too. Right outside Liam’s door, using shadow for cover, with a direct view of the only exit. He wondered what Liam thought about having an armed guard at his door, about not being trusted without a handler on top of him.
    Then Zane realized he knew exactly how Liam felt.
    Ty stopped in front of Zane, both of them standing in the doorway to the room Ty had once occupied. Zane gritted his teeth when he met Ty’s eyes.
    “You want to talk?” Ty asked. “Or are you still too mad at me?”
    “You don’t think I deserve to be mad for a little longer?”
    Ty’s eyes searched over Zane’s face, then he stepped into the room. He kicked his shoes off, pulled his T-shirt over his head, and tossed it at the table.
    Zane followed, pulling the door closed behind him. He made sure to lock it.
    “You’re seriously going to leave it at that?” Zane said, voice pitched low. They were in the room with the pages plastered to the walls. He had confidence in Ty’s work, that they couldn’t be overheard.
    Ty faced him. He shrugged. “What do you want me to say? I told you I was sorry. I told you why I did it. And you know what, Zane? I’d do it again. In a heartbeat. Because I was protecting someone I love.”
    “You weren’t protecting me, Ty, you were spying on me. The fact that you don’t see that, that you’d march right down that road again without thinking twice, that scares the piss out of me. How the